An apology should cost you something

Wow. Things have been going off the rails for Johann Hari since he got ‘busted’ massaging quotes in his interviews. Now he’s issued an apology and given an explanation (again) for his lack of truthfulness, and touches on some of the points I try to make here now and then about the generalised loss of credibility that results from bending or parsing the truth — being inauthentic. Worth reading.

Johann Hari: A personal apology

Thursday, 15 September 2011

I’ve written so many articles over the years laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of other people. This time, I am writing an article laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of myself. If you give it out, you have to take it. If you demand high standards of others, you have to be just as damning when you fail to uphold them yourself. …

In my work, I’ve spent a lot of time dragging other people’s flaws into the light. I did it because I believe that every time you point out that somebody is going wrong, you give them a chance to get it right next time and so reduce the amount of wrongdoing in the world. …

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Why is Hari finally seeing the light after two and a half months? As it happens, that’s exactly how long it took for the Independent to conclude its inquiry into his conduct. Apparently no one told Hari that apologies offered under compulsion, like confessions given under torture, are meaningless and best ignored.

And this apology is more meaningless than most. Like his last one, it’s shot through with self-justification, self-regard and petty swipes at his critics. Most unforgivably, Hari still chooses to cast his sin as one of ignorance rather than calculation: because he “rose very fast in journalism straight from university,” he never had a chance to learn that making it look like someone said something to you that they actually said to someone else is wrong.

“If I had asked the many experienced colleagues I have here at The Independent – who have always been very generous with their time – they would have told me that, and they would have explained just how wrong I was,” he writes. “It was arrogant and stupid of me not to ask.”

No, Johann, it’s arrogant and stupid of you to think anyone you’re not related to by blood is going to buy this. Journalism is filled with people who rose fast and/or received no formal training. Most of us (I’m in the latter category) never had to be told you can’t steal quotes. You’re smarter than most. You knew this. Until you admit it, you’ll never have a chance of regaining your credibility.

Allegations of quote-stealing and factual embellishment by Mr Hari have been swirling for months, at first in the blogosphere and then in the mainstream media. I have not posted about the whole sorry saga to date because—at the end of the day—a hack is only a hack, and the press already spends too much time talking and thinking about itself.

But something about the weasel wording of Mr Hari’s apology today sticks in the craw. I have also been depressed to see a chorus of well-known journalists leap to Mr Hari’s defence, arguing that what he did was silly or foolish, but is not really his fault. One senior colleague of his told me recently that the real problem was that Mr Hari had never gone to journalism school or worked on a newsdesk, but had jumped straight to a career as a columnist, interviewer and foreign correspondent. Mr Hari adopts this own line for himself now, writing today how he rose very quickly in journalism straight from university.